Why Stylist has gone sepia this week

You’ll probably have noticed that the Stylist website looks a little different this week – here’s why.

Stylist.co.uk is looking decidedly more vintage this week – and it’s all down to a very important date.

Tuesday 6 February marks the centenary of some women receiving the vote. In 1918, around 40% of women – those over the age of 30 who were property owners, married to property owners or university graduates – were finally granted the right to vote.

Later this year, it will also be 100 years since the Parliament (Qualification of Women Act), which gave women over the age of 21 the right to stand for election as an MP.

To celebrate, Stylist has undergone a suffrage-inspired makeover. A special Suffragette issue of the print magazine will hit the streets in cities across the UK on Tuesday 6 and Wednesday 7 February, while Stylist.co.uk has undergone a complete redesign for the week of 5-11 February.

The site design takeover took roughly a week to create, UX/UI designer Vivien Ilett says.

“We worked with the art director of Stylist magazine to bring the digital brand and print together in the design elements,” she explains.

The design team utilised the original layout of the site, overriding it with a suffragette colour palette, tinting all images and reworking the typography to give it a more art nouveau/old newsprint feel.

“We used the suffragette colours of purple, green and white (cream in this case) – Freedom, Hope and Purity,” says Ilett. “The fonts are an homage to protest posters from that time: bold, commanding, old-fashioned serifed fonts.”

Stylist.co.uk editor Kayleigh Dray says: “At Stylist, we’re constantly looking at the issues that impact our audience of smart, feminist women – so, as we celebrate the centenary of some women receiving the vote, it feels only natural that we fully embrace the spirit of the suffragettes.

“Not only are we set to provide readers with a wealth of thought-provoking content on women’s suffrage, but we have also – for the first time ever – transformed the look and feel of our website to mirror the ‘antique’ effects used in the very special Suffragette issue of Stylist magazine.”

“Of course, while an ‘aged’ website may feel ironic to some, we feel it will truly bring our suffrage content to life in the digital world – and perfectly highlight how far we’ve come since that fateful day in 1918.”

See more of Stylist’scommemorative content celebrating the 100th anniversary of votes for womenhere.

Image: Rex Features

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Emily Reynolds

Emily Reynolds is a journalist and author based in London. Her first book, A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind, came out in February 2017 with Hodder & Stoughton. She is currently working on her second.